Chewing Can be Soothing

While stress is a fact of life, managing life's smaller stresses may be as easy as chewing gum.

With people experiencing stress more than ever before, new research suggests there may be a simpler solution to help us stress less. The first-ever study from Swinburne University in Melbourne found that chewing sugarfree gum increases alertness, improves performance and can reduce anxiety during mild stress by 16%¹.

The controlled, randomised study examined 40 people while they performed on the Defined Intensity Stressor Simulation (DISS), a multi-tasking platform which reliably induces stress and measures performance. The participants’ levels of anxiety, alertness and stress levels were measured before and after completing the DISS while chewing and not chewing sugarfree gum.

Professor Scholey believes the research demonstrates a relationship between increased alertness and a more relaxed state.

Professor Scholey’s research was commissioned by the Wrigley Science Institute™ and was presented at the 10th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine (ICBM) on the 30th August 2008. It will be published in the Physiology and Behaviour Journal.

¹Scholey, Andrew, Crystal Haskell, Bernadette Robertson, David Kennedy, Anthea Milne, Mark Wetherell. "Chewing gum alleviates negative mood and reduces cortisol during acute laboratory psychological stress." Physiology & Behavior. 2009 (97); 304-312.